Feedback about driver v3.0 beta
 

Dear forum,

Can I ask about your feedback on the v3.0 beta we have just released?
http://www.displaylink.com/downloads/osx

In this release we've worked on improving performance and in particular latency. Moving windows around should feel much more natural.

How is it working for you?

Thank you!
Carlo

Hi Carlo,

Just installed 3.0 Beta. Already it is somewhat improved with macOS Sierra.
The frame rate is very good, but when moving a Chrome browser window into my DisplayLink monitor to type this reply I still see black areas on the page and it is very slow to initially refresh the window.
Oddly if I move my mouse pointer through the black areas it rubs out the black (following the mouse trail) to reveal the rest of the window below.
Clicking again on the top bar of the window causes it to correctly refresh instantly, but only if you first click on something inside the window or switch between Chrome tabs on that window. Looks like an easy fix in there somewhere.

It's great to be able to use this monitor again almost like pre-Sierra OSX. Almost there!

David

macOS Sierra 10.12.1
Mac mini (Late 2012)

Carlo, latency does seem noticeably improved - moving the mouse cursor and windows around is much better.

I have an issue though where if I have the DisplayLink box (Dell D3100) plugged in for cold boot, the DisplayLink screens initialise correctly for the login screen but then once I've logged in may quickly freeze (requiring a reboot), is that something you've seen before?

Just updated to the 3.0 beta. Everything appears to be working OK. I have 2 displays now in my "normal" setup using DisplayLink in addition to the 28" Thunderbolt connected display, for a total of 4 displays. I am anxiously awaiting macOS Sierra 10.12.2 that is reputed to fix the black areas when moving windows.

I will update you if I see anything odd.

Much improved
 

MacOS 10.11, on MacBook Air 11" late 2012.
This build is working *very* well for me.
In fact it's working about as well as it's ever worked in the three years I've been relying on DisplayLink for external displays -- which has been very good at times, if a bit disappointing at others.
The mouse cursor and dragged windows no longer feels like they're on 30fps screens when they're on my DisplayLink-driven displays.
Only TextWrangler is laggy when one of its windows straddles a monitor boundary, but that's nothing new.
Well done!

Thank you all for the feedback,

Keep it coming!

Is anyone using 2560x1440 or 4K screens with DisplayLink? These are the hardest and it would be great to hear your impressions.

A few answers.
For HappySundays the black window or lack of refresh is an OS defect that Apple fixed in the 10.12.2 betas, we're all eagerly waiting for it to be released.

For shad0wca7 can you please send me the logs just after the reboot when that happens? I think you should be able to send me a private message here on the forum.
I'm sure you already have tried it, but in case please try to recover first by unplugging the DisplayLink device.

Best regards,
Carlo

Using a 90° rotation I have a 1080x2560 resolution, plus a 1080p monitor, both with DisplayLink beta driver. I compare against a not rotated 2580x1080 Displayport Screen connected to a MacBook Air.

In Safari (Version 10.0.1 ) I sometimes get fragmented dark grey background toolbars and cannot read my bookmark's names. This also happens with the Mail app. Doesn't happen in Chrome (Version 54.0.2840.98 (64-bit)).

Performance is quite good.

I've been using a Dell D3100 on a MacBook Air (early 2014) for about two weeks. I have three Dell U2515H displays hooked up at 2560x1440. One is connected directly to the Thunderbolt 2 port and the others to the dock (DisplayPort and HDMI - unfortunately I'm only getting 50Hz on the HDMI).
With 2.6 on Sierra I was quite disappointed and even considered going back to my Lenovo PC, but with 3.0b1 I have my hopes up! Performance is considerably better, although I still find it unacceptable in the long run.
"WindowServer" and "DisplayLinkManager" are still hogging my CPU, mouse movement is laggy and the display I use for coding in Sublime Text also lags. I find myself moving important windows to the TB display where performance is excellent.

I haven't had any crashes, but I see the occasional black windows and other graphical glitches. That doesn't bother me that much though - performance is the most important.

I have enabled "Reduce motion" and "Reduce transparency". Is there anything else that can optimize performance?

That's just my 2 cents - let me know if I can contribute in any other way! :)

I have two 2560x1600 screens. One is on displaylink. With the 3.0b1 driver and "reduce transparencies" checked it works fairly well however when a window is moved/dragged on top of another window the underlying window content is erased and not refreshed.

For example- when using the "preview" app a window on top of another window when moved will cause the underlying window to erase its content to white and it remains erased until I click on the underlying window which then refreshes the display content of that window.

This lack of refresh occurs with all apps on the displaylink screen.

I'm using an asus mb169b+ (1920x1080), MacOS Sierra 10.12.1 with the latest 3.0 beta:

1) The display lag is virtually non existent, which is quite different from when I unboxed the product and used Asus's drivers.

2) However, I am also having the redraw/artifact problem, where it doesn't seem like things on the screen are updating (symptom - I drag a window across to the attached screen, about halfway through this action it turns completely black, when I stop and drag the mouse cursor across the screen, it updates in places where the mouse cursor moves to).

I think a step in the right direction (the previous drivers were simply unusable), but because of the redraw problem it's still practically unusable for me.

Ditto of above post. Performance is much better with this version but I am also seeing the visual glitches a lot more. I am running 10.12.2 beta (16C60b) on a mac Mini 2012 core i7/16gb ram. I have DL3.0 beta installed from "DisplayLink Installer 77739.dmg" and my device is a "Plugable USB3-HDMI-DVI" that uses the DL3500 chipset I believe.

I am attaching a couple of pictures I took with my phone to show the artifacting. Hoping that these visual glitches can be improved...

https://monosnap.com/file/pI69TJLE1a...VozkDqR5TA.png

https://monosnap.com/file/1JfYkPfp3w...5dVk9NAwVp.png

New user to the forum just to add feedback on the Beta drivers. Mouse latency is much MUCH better. Thank you for addressing this.

I'm experiencing the exact same artifacting as the above 2 posters so I wanted to make sure to add that feedback for your team.

I can deal with the artifacts as a trade off for the mouse latency being better. It's a huge help in my workflow that's for sure!

Stability is improving. Yay!
 

Display Link driver v3.0 beta 1 stability compared to v2.6 is much improved running on macOS Sierra. On v2.6, my extended displays would become unresponsive and only a reboot would restore functionality. Something as simple as moving windows around the displays would crash the driver and require a reboot. This hasn't happened nearly as often with v3.0 beta 1.

Thanks for the continued development! :)

Used the beta drivers for the first one today on OSX 10.12.2 beta 5 and they worked quite well. Granted I really only use that monitor for iTerm to ssh to Linux servers, but I did drag winded around in it and it worked well. I didn't notice any issues with the Windows being black when dragging them to the DisplayLink monitor. So for me, it's been good overall.

I have attached a screenshot of CPU usage from Activity Monitor when using Safari on one of my DisplayLink connected displays. MacBook has been powered on for 2 hours, so quite a bit of CPU time used.

3.0 b1 experience
 

So I actually just received my first DisplayLink device yesterday and I'm actually starting off with the 3.0b1 drivers as my very first experience with the product. So I cannot compare to using something previous.

But I can give a comparison of using my 4K monitor on a MacBook 2015 (10.12.1) either directly on the machine or through the DL adapter. I've simply just moved the cable over to the new device and will bring my other monitor and connect both next week.

The first thing I noticed is that when I close the lid on my Macbook that it doesn't reset the display preferences to delete that monitor from the config. It still exists in my monitors and I can put windows there or get my mouse lost on that screen. Not sure if that's an intentional design of the way the driver works, but its different from using the AV adapter.

Second there is a little bit of lag on the DL but not that much. However, I do seem to be running about 10% CPU higher than I was before. There was usually a little bit of background stuff always going on but its made a 10%+ jump. Looking in top it seems that the DIsplayLinkManager is keeping about 10% of my cpu occupied all the time now. I think I can probably live with that in order to have both of my 4K displays at the same time.

Third, the mouse seems a bit laggy specifically on tap-presses. When I go to click on another email message or something I find that I have to either click on the message or hold on the trackpad just a little longer than usual. I'm not sure how that is connected into the DL driver but its something I noticed today.

Overall, I'm pretty impressed in the whole technology and stoked to get both my 4K monitors (and potentially a couple of my 2560x1600 monitors) hooked up to my little Macbook ;-).

Phrogg

In regard to clamshell mode not working as you expect, Apple has very specific requirements in order to make this mode work -> https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201834

In short, with only a USB attached DisplayLink-based adapter connected the above conditions will not be met, so clamshell mode will not work.

Well I didn't know that. Learned something new today. I plugged in my second 4K display and now clamshell mode works fine. I'm going to spend the next week or so running with both displays and clamshell and report back. Hoping that 10.12.2 actually releases soon as well.

Phrogg

Artifacts
 

I am noticing that there is a little artifact being left in the search boxes on my DL monitor that aren't in the non-DL monitor. Even trying to capture it in a screen grab doesn't quite show it since it comes and goes as you move the crosshairs over it. But I see this in every search box and sometime in others like the new invitations box of Calendar.

Further reports
 

Ok, another day, another report for you.

Yesterday I had to finally just stop using the DL attached monitor. Every now and then (maybe every 30 minutes or so) both of my screens would black momentarily and then reset and come back on. But when they did this, they dropped all of the windows off the DL screen back to the onboard monitor. I finally got fed up and just stopped using the other screen for anything I was working on. But it did continue to happen throughout the day. I'd put one finder window there and then sometime within the next 30-45 minutes it would blip and then that window would move over.

Today, however, is a new day with 10.12.2 downloaded and installed. At this point, it seems to have been working pretty stable most of the day. I have not seen that same issue where it blanks and resets at all today.

I do still have the artifacts in the search boxes as reported earlier. I can actually take a window and span it across both screens and when I get to about 60% on the DL screen the artifact (even if on the non-DL screen) appears.

New issue is that I'm seeing the windows losing little pieces of their display and showing artifacts as I drag my mouse across them like luckman212 reported back on 12/8. However, performance seems pretty nice on this. I can tell the difference between the DL and the non-DL monitors but its really not terribly different now in speed and responsiveness. It is quite usable and I'm forcing myself to actually put windows on the DL screen and use them for the sake of these reports and getting the driver to be all it can be ;-).

I've just updated to 10.12.2 - seems great so far. Mission Control is finally working properly! This together with the new beta driver is delivering a vastly superior experience compared to the older builds.

I updated to Mac Sierra 10.12.2 and I still have this annoying issue:

https://i.imgur.com/MICYzPi.png

If I directly connect the Display to my Mac, it works fine. I use HDMI.

Like Vasile, I am also getting weird artifacts left behind by moving the cursor when using Chrome on my DisplayLink connected screen after updating to macOS 10.12.2.

Attempting to capture a screen shot of the affected Chrome window results in the window getting wiped completely for a few moments.

Scrolling seems to clear all artifacts until it begins to happen again a few seconds later.

3.0 beta made my display link screen completely unusable.

2.6 was still working more or less fine after the upgrade to macOS 10.12.2.

after installing 3.0 i got massive repaint problems on the display link screen. white windows and desktop background, cursor artefacts, windows in the front erasing windows in the background and more.

after going back to 2.6 the problems remain and the displaylink screen is unusable.

I have updated to macOS 10.12.2 and used the DisplayLink displays for a full working day. Performance is better, although no way near my natively connected display. I still wouldn't say performance is acceptable, but at least now the displays are usable ;)

I'm also seeing weird glitches on DisplayLink connected displays but that doesn't bother me that much - performance is much more important! :)

Hi All,

The team in DisplayLink has been extremely pleased with the amount and quality of your feedback: thank you!

The key message we got is:
- We can see a performance improvement - and we want more!
- Please get rid of the artefacts around the mouse pointer
- We can still see the macOS glitches (10.12.2 should have helped with some)

We're working based on your feedback.

Best regards,
Carlo

Can we subscribe somewhere to know when a new version is released?

Note: 10.12.3 Beta does not fix the issue (with white rectangles or following the mouse).
If you need more details (logs?), please let us know.

Retina Display Black after wake from sleep
 

Firstly, it's great to see active engagement from the display link team, thanks.

Secondly - I have the artifacts also +

Thirdly, upon wake from sleep the mBP pro retina display stays black.

2015 MBP Retina.

Hi Rudders,

We're going to get rid of the mouse pointer artefacts.
The internal screen black on wake is the most important issue remaining in Sierra. This still needs to be fixed so opening a bug with Apple would help greatly: bugreporter.apple.com

Best regards,
Carlo

mouse pointer artefacts are not the only artefacts with the version.

the shadow drawn around windows will erase the desktop background to white in the lower 2/3 of a display link connected screen portrait screen. moving the window will erase the complete background in the lower 2/3.

strangely after installing beta 3.0 this effekt stays even if going back to the previous stable version.

Closing this thread: beta 2 has been released
 

Many thanks for the exceptionally useful feedback in this thread.

I'm closing this thread now, please let us know how you find the beta 2 in the new thread: http://www.displaylink.org/forum/showthread.php?p=82299

Best regards,
Carlo